That’s Not Good For You 🍴 Weekend Open Thread 🍴

My heart doctor would probably have a heart attack at the very sight of the image above. At the very least he would submit me to a thundering scold. I think he thinks that just because he helped save my life he should have some input.

What he and most medical professionals don’t understand is that Americans are so bombarded constantly with “that’s not good for you” rhetoric that it begins to go in one ear and out the other. Many like to tell us that our bad habits are going to kill us. Scary talk makes me hungry for comfort food.

The problem with all this crying wolf is that like the old story is that the time comes when no one is listening. It often seems as if, according to the experts, every thing except kale and quiqua are bad for you. At that point people begin to lose interest. Not in food, in listening to experts.

A man found a magic lamp on the beach. He rubbed it and out popped a genie, who gave the man three wishes.

The man wished for a million dollars, and poof – There was a million dollars.

Then he wished for a convertible, and poof – There was a convertible.

Finally he wished he could be irresistible to all women… Poof – He turned into a box of chocolates. 😃

Trying to be a responsible eater I tried a recipe for kale chips. Basically you put kale on a cookie sheet and bake them into chips. Wanting to have a good supply I baked a lot of kale. One bite told me all I wanted to know about kale chips. YUCK! Thrown into the back yard not even the rabbits would touch the kale. I wasted a lot of time making kale compost.

I’m back to eating kale like I did before. I chop up a few leaves and hide them in my salad. I don’t like kale and this is the only way I will eat it. I used to hide grated carrot in meatloaf to fool my kids. Now I’m fooling myself.

We were told for a generation that salt is bad for us. Many of us tried to limit salt in our diet. Saltaholics, like me, mourned the white stuff we loved so much. Nothing ever tasted as good without salt as it tasted with it. Salt substitutes? Nasty.

This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure.

WHAT? You mean all the times I’ve eaten food I considered bland because I couldn’t have my salt it wasn’t necessary? You mean every time I’ve gotten “the look” from family and friends for even daring to look at a salt shaker they were wrong? The fact that I have high blood pressure and salt is bad for me it a myth? I am officially miffed!

Butter was banished in favor of healthy substitutes. Substitutes that you try to tell yourself don’t taste all that bad. Not all that bad is a long way from good. And now, guess what?

A new report published in the online journal BMJ Open Heart calls that long-standing advice into question. Researchers reviewed and analyzed the clinical trials that were originally used back in the 1970s and 80s as the basis for warnings about dietary fat, and they found that the evidence just didn’t add up.

The problem with many of the things advertised as “bad” is that they in and of themselves aren’t “bad”. What’s bad is excess.

A good example is my use of butter. I love the stuff. In my mind a baked potato, healthy in itself, only exists to sop up as much butter as I can slather on. Butter wasn’t bad – Marge’s use of it was.

We all know that fruits and vegetables are good for us. We also know that fast food usually is not. Sometimes I wonder if all the Oracles of Food that have lectured us for a generation haven’t made the problem with bad food and good food worse.

We human beings are contrary critters. Tell us we can’t have something and that is suddenly the thing we want most in life. Tell us fast food is bad and we’ll sprint to get it.

If we’re not supposed to have midnight snacks then why is there a light in the fridge?

Our contrariness cause a lot of problems. The Oracles of doom have only added to them. Don’t tell people they can’t have some food they love ever again. Teach them to eat good healthy foods most of the time and to have their favorites some of the time. And don’t lecture!

😃 According to a recent article I just read on nutrition, they said eating right doesn’t have to be complicated. Nutritionists say there is a simple way to tell if you’re eating right. Colors. Fill your plates with bright colors. Greens, reds, yellows. In fact, I did that this morning. I had an entire bowl of M&M’s. It was delicious! I never knew eating right could be so easy.

When I was a kid my mother telling me that something was good for me didn’t make me like it any better. These days someone telling me something is bad for me doesn’t work either. Teaching moderation is a better approach IMO. Us being lectured and badgered and accosted about our eating habits is more apt to meet with hostility than compliance.

After all – they – the ubiquitous they who always know what’s best for everyone have been so very wrong so many times before.

29 Responses to “That’s Not Good For You 🍴 Weekend Open Thread 🍴”

Love this post, Marge. You highlight the issues of the Powers-That-Be making proclamations abt “healthy eating” that turn out to be a bunch of hooey.

Take the salt issue: people need salt. We do. Not an overabundance of it, but like so many OTHER minerals, we are designed to have salt in our diets. I cut back on salt DECADES ago when my parents did for – yes, you got it – high blood pressure under the advice of doctors. At this point, what most people think of as a normal amt of salt is excessive to me, but I still like some and don’t eschew it completely at all. Now they are accepting that, um, yeah – we do need it, and no, it isn’t the horrible killer places like NYC claim it is.

Same with butter, and a NUMBER of different kinds of nuts. Now researchers are discovering that – SURPRISE – nuts are GOOD for you. Well, no DUH. I never bought into that lunacy. Of COURSE they are good for us. One much maligned nut was the walnut, which has a tremendous amt of health benefits, but which they thought had a lot of fat so people shouldn’t eat too much. Turns out they were completely wrong.

That is the problem with jumping on bandwagons, whether it is food, music, politicians, whatever. Like this whole craze abt NO GLUTEN!!! The ONLY people who shouldn’t have gluten are those with Celiac Sprue disease or allergies to gluten. The numbers of people with either are quite small. Like salt, like fat, people NEED gluten. It is how our bodies run.

With everything, moderation is the key. Once in a blue moon, throwing caution to the wind and having an incredibly tasty meal damn the consequences is okay. I would argue, it is actually good for us because then we don’t feel like we are being deprived of something we really want just because it tastes good.

Glad you liked it. I have wanted to write something on this subject for some time. I was a “saltaholic” for many years. I turned my food white with it. From that to only the salt that was in processed food was very difficult for me. I believe that what I ended up doing was searching out the saltiest foods to get my fix. Not consciously – at least I don’t think my conscience mind is that sneaky. My subconscious mind definitely is so I like to blame all my bad actions on it.

One thing I’ve done is to use kosher salt. It’s so big you can actually see what you are using easily. Helps me moderate my consumption.

With butter I slice it very thin, about 10 slices per quarter pound and then only allow one slice per whatever.

The real enemy of health is sugar. But the sugar lobby keeps that out of the public mind as much as possible. The fact that there is diet soda and ice cream and other foods show that isn’t completely successful. But the actual harm it does is still pretty much a secret to most people. It does worse things than move you up a size.

I intend to go into that in a later post. I wanted this one to be somewhat light-hearted for the weekend.

You know I am a sucker for military reunions, and when they include animals, all the better. This woman, Molli Oliver, is a true patriot who goes WAY out of her way to reunite military dogs who have retired with their handlers. Bless her for this act of great love and devotion both to dogs and the military:

This is a great example of what the left is all about. They are not only thugs, they are relentless thugs. The “Joe Doe” witch hunts are just another name for a “Star Chamber”.

Star Chamber – In modern usage, legal or administrative bodies with strict, arbitrary rulings and secretive proceedings are sometimes called, metaphorically or poetically, star chambers. This is a pejorative term and intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the proceedings.

Love the post, Marge. I’ve always just eaten what my body wanted…it seems to know more than all the “experts” what makes it feel good and what doesn’t. This extra 20 pounds I carry isn’t so much WHAT I eat but HOW MUCH of it! 🙂

And of course all the brouhaha about how fat is bad for you and you’ve got to eat low-fat this and low-fat that, and come to find out fat isn’t the problem at all, it’s inflammation.

And like Amy said, the furor over gluten! Everything has to be gluten free now! Ummmm…..no, not so much. I don’t have celiac’s so bring on the gluten.

So, I’ll just continue to eat what makes my body feel healthy and energetic, and try REALLY hard to eat less. Oh yes, I know, Yoda says there’s no “try” there’s only “do” or “not do.” Yoda never had to lose 20 pounds.

The other guidance I disdain is any product that is ‘hawked’ by celebrities from diet plans, pills and magic potions. Yes I could lose weight easily if I had a trainer coming to my home daily, a chef preparing my meals and obviously a housekeeper cleaning up so I wouldn’t have to step into the kitchen. Forgot the medical doc supplying me with pills.

I take no advice from celebs about anything except what they do for a living. They know about being celebrities. All the rest is opinion and as you mention a stable of help we mere mortals don’t have.

Anyone that took Oprah’s diet advice after the first two or three times was a sucker for punishment. Not that there was anything wrong with several of the plans she touted – she just wasn’t able to stick with it. Which tells me that she, and many of the rest of us, have a problem between our ears not with our fork.

GREED is accusing OTHER PEOPLE of not paying their “fair share” when you’re living off their money and not paying any income tax at all.

GREED is forgoing giving money to charity because you support a government program that gives OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY to the poor – and, yes, studies do show that conservatives give more to charity than liberals.

GREED is bringing in large numbers of immigrants and illegals who are taking some form of welfare because you think they’ll vote for you.

GREED is saying, “We’re going to campaign by asking people to give us their votes in return for programs you oppose that we’re going to create with YOUR MONEY.”

If you want to find the GREEDIEST people in America, just turn on C-SPAN the next time Congress is in session and look at the liberal Democrats.

That surprises me not one bit. They are masters at “Look over THERE!!!” so no one pays attention to their hands in the cookie jar…

So sick of their hypocrisy, especially since everything they insist upon seems to be sticking in this culture. Mind boggling, that. I guess its because they have the biggest megaphone to shove it down our throats – the media…

The incredibly delicious flavor you can’t experience thanks to Big Bad Government –

Blackcurrants are small, dark berries that have been described as a cross between a blueberry and a cranberry. Their flavor is both sweet and sour, and they enjoy immense popularity throughout Europe. In fact, blackcurrant juice is said to be as popular in Eastern Europe as orange juice is in America.

Blackcurrants are also really good for you, containing more vitamin C than oranges and more potassium than bananas. So why are you hearing about this delightful new flavor now? It will come as no surprise to regular readers to learn that the reason we can’t have nice things is, as always, the government.

Since this post is abt health, I have the cutest video to share. But before I do, I have to tell you how Suzy set this up. She called me into the room where she was and said, “I have the cutest thing to show you, and no you can’t have one.” Harumph! A friend suggested the way around that is to get HER one as a gift! Ahahaaha.

I showed it to Lou and he said the same thing Suzy said: I can’t have one.

We raised goats at one time for the milk since my younger son was allergic to cows milk. So we had lots of baby goats. They are so cute and loving and very smart. And they turn expensive blue spruce trees into parasols.